Sharing tickets with other Zendesk Support accounts

You can share tickets from your Zendesk Support with other accounts. And, those other accounts can share their tickets with your account. You establish sharing agreements with other accounts and specify the terms under which sharing can occur and how shared tickets are managed.

Ticket sharing allows you to assign tickets to affiliated accounts and their agents either provide information toward resolving the issue or solve the issue themselves. The ticket status and comments can stay synced between the tickets in each account.

Understanding how ticket sharing works

Any Zendesk Support account can invite another account to establish a sharing agreement.

The initiating account (the sender) sets the terms of the sharing agreement, which the receiving account can accept or not.

Sharing agreements are one way. Once the receiver accepts the agreement, the sender may share tickets with the receiver. For the receiver to share tickets with the sender, they must create and initiate a sharing relationship with the other account.

If you only have receiving agreements, the sharing ticket field will not appear, and you cannot stop sharing received tickets.

The sender can only share a ticket with one other account. However, the receiver can share the ticket with an account that they have a sharing agreement with.

A shared ticket becomes a new ticket in the receiver's account with a separate ticket ID.

The ticket status, custom fields, and comments can remain synced between the ticket versions in both accounts. The custom fields must be created in both accounts (see Syncing custom fields with another account below). CC recipients are not carried over from the original ticket to the shared ticket.

Note: Any public or private comments added to a shared ticket will be visible to agents in both the original Zendesk account, and the Zendesk account the ticket is shared with. Any public comment to the shared ticket will also notify any users copied on the original ticket.

All ticket statuses can match, except for On-hold. When a ticket is changed to On-hold in one account, it will be submitted as Open in the other.

Call recordings (including Voicemail recordings) in a shared ticket, can only be accessed by signed-in agents of the Zendesk account that the original call is associated with. For example, Account A shares a call ticket with Account B, which includes the calls recording. The agents in Account B will not be able to listen to that recording in the shared ticket. If they are agents in both accounts they can listen to the recording by signing into Account A, locating the original ticket and listening to the file there. Transcriptions of voicemails remain visible, as lines of text within the shared ticket.

Depending on the terms of the agreement, the receiver may directly communicate with the ticket requester and solve the ticket.

Sharing tickets creates a dummy user in the receiving account for each user associated with the sending account ticket. The user is created even if there is a user in the receiving account with the same name and email address as the dummy profile. If an agent in the receiving account makes a comment on this shared ticket, a dummy end-user account is created in the sending account to represent this agent.

Shared tickets do not pass on user information. Tickets are never be linked to matching users in the receiving accounts, unless an agent of the receiving account manually adjusts the requester of the shared ticket when the user is created in the receiving account. This adjustment is not recommended as it can cause issues with the sharing agreement.

Each account's business rules remain separate.

A shared ticket cannot be merged with another ticket.

An account can automatically refuse to accept all sharing agreement invites.

Sharing agreements can be cancelled at any time by either the sender or the receiver.

When you send email to another Zendesk instance, automatic emails notifications are suppressed, but email notifications generated by an agent action are sent. This can cause problems if you have a ticket sharing agreement with the other Zendesk. In that case, it's possible to create an endless loop of notifications if the email address for the user in the CC or Requester field is the support address of a Zendesk you have a sharing agreement with. For information about how to prevent endless loops, see About mail loops and Zendesk email.

Setting up a ticket sharing agreement

To set up ticket sharing an administrator creates a ticket sharing invite and defines the terms (permissions) of the sharing agreement.

Note: You cannot set up sharing agreements for multiple brands. You can only share tickets using your main brand's subdomain.

A sharing agreement grants another account permission to work on your tickets. You can grant one of the two following permissions:

Make public & private comments, sync status

Make private comments, do not sync status

The first option allows the receiver to communicate directly with the requester and to change the ticket status (for example, setting it to Solved). These ticket updates are also reflected in the sender's version of the ticket.

Note: Although the receiver may be allowed to make public comments and directly interact with the requester, email notifications will link back to the account where the request was originally submitted.

The second option (private comments only and no status syncing) limits the other account to providing you with information needed to resolve the support request. For example, imagine a company that builds something that includes components from other companies. Each affiliated company (business partner) can set up a Zendesk Support and a sharing agreement to provide more details on issues related to the components they supply. In this scenario, the sender controls the ticket from initial request through to resolution, gathering information as needed from the affiliated account.

To create a ticket sharing invite

Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Tickets.

Select the Ticket sharing tab.

Select add sharing invite.

In the window that appears, select another Zendesk Support account, Atlassian JIRA, or third-party system.

Enter the URL for the account you're sharing tickets with. Depending on the option you selected in the previous step, you'll see one of the following fields:

Note: As noted on the dialog box, enabling tag synchronising may add more tags.

(Applies only if sharing with another Zendesk Support account) Select the custom fields syncing setting. You have two options:

No, do not sync custom fields between me and the receiver

Yes, sync custom fields between me and the receiver

Click Send Invite.

The receiver is notified of the invite on their Ticket Sharing page, as shown here:

The receiver can view the terms of the sharing invite and either accept, decide later, or decline the agreement.

When accepted, both accounts can immediately share tickets.

If you decline an agreement, the sender is free to try again at another time. If you don't want to establish sharing agreements with any other accounts, you can set your account to automatically decline invites (see Opting out of all sharing invites). You can also deactivate sharing agreements at any time (see Deactivating a sharing agreement).

All of your sharing agreements (accepted, pending, and rejected) are displayed on the Ticket Sharing page.

Opting out of all sharing invites

If you decide to not share tickets with any other account, you can choose to opt out of all sharing invites.

To opt out of sharing invites

Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Tickets.

Select the Ticket sharing tab.

In the section Opt out of sharing, select the Decline all sharing agreement invites.

Click Save Tab.

With this option set, you will never be informed of a sharing invite.

Deactivating a sharing agreement

Sharing agreements can be deactivated by either the sender or the receiver at any time. Deactivated agreements can't be reactivated, but both accounts are free to invite the other to accept a new sharing agreement.

To deactivate a sharing agreement

Click the Admin icon () in the sidebar, then select Tickets.

Select the Ticket sharing tab.

Locate the agreement you want to deactivate and then select View.

Click Deactivate Agreement.

Your agreement partner will be informed of the deactivation via email and this will also be reflected on their Ticket Sharing page. Deactivating an agreement means that no new tickets can be shared and that tickets that have already been shared will no longer be synced.

Referring to shared tickets in business rules

Tickets that have been created in your Zendesk Support via ticket sharing can be referenced as conditions in automations, triggers, and views. The condition Update via also include Ticket sharing as a value.

You can create a view of the tickets generated from ticket sharing, as in this example:

This will show you all the tickets that were shared to you. If you want to create a view of the all tickets you shared to another account, you can add a tag to the tickets and create business rules from that.

You can create automations or triggers that include the ticket sharing conditions. Again, using Update via is Ticket sharing as a condition you can create a trigger to escalate the shared ticket to a specific support group, to add tags, and so on.

Additionally, you can filter the view to show only inbound or outbound tickets if you have set up receiving agreements in your account.

For inbound tickets, add a clause: Ticket sharing: Received from > (instance name of who you are sharing tickets with).

For outbound tickets, add a clause: Ticket sharing: Sent to > (instance name of who you are sharing tickets with).

Note: In some cases, when a trigger in the receiving account sends notification for the new, shared ticket, if the ticket has multiple comments, the notification might include only a few comments and not all of the comments that are actually in the ticket.

Syncing custom fields with another Zendesk Support account

As described in Setting up a ticket sharing agreement, you can select to sync custom fields with another Zendesk Support. To make this work, each account must create the custom fields separately. For example, if you want to sync a custom field called "Camera model" it must exist in both accounts and must have the same title and data type.

The custom field title is not case sensitive so the sync will be successful even if one custom field is called "Camera model" and the other is called "Camera Model".

What is important to keep in mind is the data types used in each custom field; they must be compatible. The simplest way to ensure this of course is to use the same data type for each. In our example, both versions of "Camera model" are drop-down lists.

Note: It's possible to sync data between different kinds of custom fields if they both support the same type of data. For example, it's possible to sync a drop-down list with a text field since both contain a text string. This is not recommended but is mentioned here so that you're aware of the compatibility.

Other syncing rules include:

If an incompatibility between custom fields does exist, the ticket will sync but the incompatible custom fields will fail (no data will be transfered).

If a ticket is shared between two accounts, only the account where changes to the field value are made will see a record of that change in the ticket events/audits. The other account will see the altered field value, but will not see any details about the change, such as who made it or when it was made.

We have ticket sharing working between 2 internal departments and we would like to have visibility into the CCs that are included where the ticket gets initiated. As it is now, when the receiving Zendesk makes a comment, any CCs attached to the original request get those comments but the agents in the receiving Zendesk don't have visibility into who the CC's are. It hasn't caused a problem yet, but I can see it coming. Any ideas?

Ticket Sharing does not seem to be testable within a Sandbox environment. Are both organizations required to be using a Sandbox environment, or is not being able to share from a Sandbox an expected issue.

Hi - I must be missing something obvious because I've set up a sharing agreement between live and sandbox accounts without issue. But how/where do I designate that a ticket should be shared? There seems no setting on the ticket to allow this, so I've checked my ticket fields and there's nothing.

I suspect this is obvious but with the agreement in place, how do I determine a ticket now gets shared?

We have a ticket sharing agreement between us and a 3rd party and seems to be working well however we have encountered an issue when one company has solved a shared ticket, the ticket stays active in the other's system. Can someone advise on this?

When you (or a 3rd party) set up a sharing agreement, you can choose whether you want your partner to be able to make public and private comments and sync status, or only to make private comments and not sync status.

My educated guess here is that your sharing agreement is set up so that the ticket status is not shared between the two Zendesks. This is something that an admin in the Zendesk that initiated the sharing agreement will be able to change!

Hi! We have sharing setup with a 3rd party and we are trying to find a way to reference shared tickets in our communications. It has different numbers in our system and their system. So when we say "ZD ticket 1011111 is great example of that problem" the 3rd party has no idea what we are talking about, since their ticket numbers only have 6 digits. Anyone found a good solution to this?

We've had this same situation. We and the other end of the share setup numeric ticket fields with the same name, so when we enter our ticket number, they see it on their end. I believe the share has to be set up to allow for sharing all tags and status, etc. Since by default they also cannot see our status (Normal, High, etc.) we set up a second drop-down field, again with the same names and drop-down values (cannot be the exact same as what Zendesk uses, I don't think) and when we set our value to match the system field, the other end is also notified of that. Especially useful in urgent situations.

The only other thing I can think of off the top of my head is the fact that you're not syncing custom fields between the two Zendesks, so it's possible that a required custom field isn't being populated on one end, preventing it from being solved on the other end.

I'd recommend submitted a support ticket if you need to do further troubleshooting, because sharing agreements can get complex. But feel free to come back and share what you were able to figure out!

Another thing that may be helpful is that the ticket originator could use a placeholder to show the original ticket id. For example, whomever is the ticket originator could apply the placeholder "ticket.id", between double curly brackets. They could do this manually within the ticket comment or via a macro or trigger. After the placeholder is applied, the company with whom you are sharing the ticket will see the original ticket number within the ticket.

Currently, syncing comments is an all-or-nothing settings...there is no way to granularly parse out public or private comments. In a similar manner, ticket sharing drop-downs are not fields that can be added or removed from specific forms. Good suggestion though...perhaps we'll see this in future iterations!

So both Public AND Private comments are shared between sharing partners? What if one of the shared parties is our customer? We do not want our customer to see our Private comments, just the Public comments....is there a way to make that happen?

Example:

Company A (the vendor) opens a sharing agreement with Customer B.

Customer B opens a sharing agreement with Company A.

Customer B submits a ticket to Company A to fix an issue and Company A enables 'sharing' on the ticket. Does Customer B see ALL the comments on that ticket or just the Public comments?

The Product team has asked that you share your feedback about public vs. private comments over in the Product Feedback topic. Specifically, they asked to understand the problem behind the request, so please share when and how the issues arise in your workflow, and how frequently.

Hello, i totally agree with the previous comments: if 2 teams within a Group have their own Zendesk, it is better that the other ones do not see the privates comments, for instance when we joke between us on the dumb requests of the other team ("hey look at this request guys ! this bro doesn't know how to restart his computer, haha!") . You see....

On another hand, even though it is not possible today to hide private comments, could we have quickly a third possibility to do not share status but only public/private comments. Indeed, when a ticket is a request from a team to be solved by another one the open/standby status cannot be the same at all, but the exact opposite !

In the end, the configuration window should be far simplier if it was based on check boxes such as those:

Share public comments: YES/NO

Share private comments: YES/NO

Share status: YES/NO

Share CC: YES/NO

Share Tags: YES/NO

Share Custom Fields: YES/NO

That way it would fit to all types of needs and configurations.

Moreover, note that more and more Groups and Services are using Zendesk (it's good for you) but consider that this sharing option will be more and more necessary to use. So please consider this as a high priority development.